Just because a person contributes to a web site anonymously does not mean he or she is an unreliable source of information. According to an article published June 25, 2020 in the Tor blog, a recent study by researchers from Drexel, NYU, and the University of Washington challenges the assumption of sites like Wikipedia that routinely ban anonymous postings. The research team, which included Tandon Computer Science and Engineering faculty member Dr. Rachel Greenstadt,  and Ph.D. candidate Chau Tran, studied some 11,000 Wikipedia edits made by Tor users able to bypass the ban between 2007 and 2018 and found the quality of these contributions were similar to those provided by IP editors ( non-logged-in users identified by their IP addresses), and by first-time editors.

Furthermore, study results presented in May at the IEEE Security and Privacy conference, found that Tor-based editors were more likely to focus on controversial topics, such as politics, technology, and religion. Therefore, as lead author Tran notes in the Tor blog article, blocking these authors creates a form of “collateral damage” in the form of “unrealized valuable contributions from anonymity seekers.” 

To read the blog article, go to https://blog.torproject.org/the-value-of-anonymous-contributions-wikipedia?__s=fhb4zzuy2usv5bfnw9cb.